18 posts tagged “weird”

Yes, you read correctly. Anything for money, ay?

 

For sale on eBay

In case you wanted to make a bid...

 

International Space Station astronauts are eagerly awaiting the arrival of shuttle Discovery - it is bringing a new pump to mend their broken toilet. The station's urine collection unit, as opposed to its solid waste unit, has been malfunctioning for several days.

Nasa said it thought a separator pump was at fault, and the three male crew members were operating it manually. To make room for the new part, Nasa has had to remove other equipment from the shuttle, which launches on Saturday.

"Clearly, having a working toilet is a priority for us," shuttle payload manager Scott Higginbotham said.

On its website, Nasa said the crew first realised something was wrong when they "heard a loud noise and the fan stopped working". The crew replaced many of the toilet's working parts, but had to adopt "temporary manual operation of the pump", and a backup system for the separator unit.

Nasa said one of its employees was rushing from Russia to Florida with the spare parts for the Russian-built toilet ahead of the shuttle launch. A 50cm-long (20in) pump and additional hardware, weighing about 16kg (35lbs), would be carried as hand luggage on a commercial plane, Nasa said.

The employee is expected to drive the parts to the Kennedy Space Center, and they should be packed on the shuttle on Thursday. For a while, the crew was told to use toilet facilities in the Soyuz capsule docked at the ISS, and several other backup solutions are available.

The space station's solid waste unit is said to be functioning well.

Maine - If you're in the market for a roomy brick-and-stone Victorian — complete with some pretty impressive security features — look no further. The Somerset County Jail in downtown Skowhegan is for sale. It has a price tag of $200,000.

"It's an interesting building. It could be used for many, many things," said Philip Roy, chairman of the Somerset County commissioners.

The 14,000-square-foot lockup, which was built in 1897, is scheduled to shut down later this year when a new 200-bed county jail opens in Madison.

One of the selling points, said Tonya Allen, an assistant real estate broker, is that the building is situated in the heart of downtown Skowhegan, with no zoning or permit-use restrictions.

Roy said some ideas for the old jail include turning the property into a restaurant, an art gallery, a gift shop or even a bus station.

The razor-wire fencing comes included

Its creators admit it is the ultimate in decadence: a $US175 hamburger. The Wall Street Burger Shoppe just raised its price from $150 to assure its designation as the costliest burger in the city as determined by Pocket Change, an online newsletter about the most expensive things in New York.

"Wall Street has good days and bad days. We wanted to have the everyday burger (for $4) ... and then something special if you really have a good day on Wall Street," said co-owner Heather Tierney.

The burger, created by chef and co-owner Kevin O'Connell, seeks to justify its price with a Kobe beef patty, lots of black truffles, seared foie gras, aged Gruyere cheese, wild mushrooms and flecks of gold leaf on a brioche bun.

The eatery sells 20 or 25 per month in the fine dining room upstairs versus hundreds of $4 burgers each day at the diner counter downstairs, Tierney said.

Pocket Change previously designated the double truffle burger at Daniel Boulud's DB Bistro Moderne as the most expensive at $120, and the Burger Shoppe set out to top that.

Boulud's creation - available only during black truffle season from December to March - rose to $150 this past season, so the Burger Shoppe raised its price on Monday to $175.

A British owned island in the South Atlantic has been overrun by hundreds of thousands of monster mice which have evolved into carnivores. The mice of Gough Island have grown to two or even three times the size of an ordinary house mouse.

They have developed from eating insects and seeds and are now devouring young birds, including albatross chicks, in huge numbers. Birds on the island had been used to having no predators and are unable to fend off the mice which attack in groups at night.

Gough Island is regarded as one of the most important seabird colonies in the world.
It is the size of Guenrsey and is thought to have around 700,000 mice all descended from a few that escaped from on a whaling boat.

Albatross chicks weigh up to 10kg and the mice weigh only 35g but together they are able to kill and eat the birds.

RSPB scientist Dr Geoff Hilton said: "It's like a tabby cat attacking a hippopotamus."

Conservation organisation Birdlife International says the mice are threatening several bird species to the point of extinction. The RSPB wants to use helicopters to drop thousands of tonnes of mouse poison on the island in an operation that would cost £2.6 million.

There's a video HERE (Not for the squeamish)

Some remarkable footage of a flying fish has been captured by a TV crew filming off the southern tip of Japan. It is claimed to be one of the longest recorded flights of this acrobatic animal.

The fish was completely airborne for 45 seconds. This beats one previous, impressive report from an American researcher in the 1920s of 42 seconds. The animal is seen travelling parallel to a ferry, which itself is motoring at about 30km/hour (20mph).

The fish was able to continue flying by occasionally beating the surface of the water with its tail fin. The footage was shot by an NHK crew as it travelled to Yakushima Island.

According to Junji Yonezawa, at the Center for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries on Outlying Islands, the animal's flight-time of 45 seconds must be close to its physical limit, as brachial respiration is impossible while moving through the air.

There are some 40 species of "flying fish" in the family known as Exocoetidae. The animals are found worldwide in warmer waters. Their flight ability comes from a glide rather than a powered flapping.

 

An embryonic twin has been discovered in the stomach of a nine-year-old Greek girl who went to hospital complaining of stomach pains.

News agency Associated Press reported doctors at Larissa General Hospital surgically removed a growth that was an embryo more than 2 inches in length.

"They could see on the right side that her belly was swollen, but they couldn't suspect that this tumour would hide an embryo," hospital director Iakovos Brouskelis said.

The girl has made a full recovery.

The embryo had developed a head, hair and eyes, but had no brain or umbilical cord, hospital paediatric department head Andreas Markou said.

It had been absorbed into its twin in the womb.

Such absoprtion is rare, occuring in about one 500,000 live births

A Vacaville, Calif., man found a pit bull stuck in the engine of his truck and chewing through wires Tuesday morning, his family said.

Walter Witthoeft had just woken up and went outside to put power steering fluid in his truck. When he popped the hood, he saw a pair of eyes, heard growling and then noticed a dog wiggling around in his engine.

The dog worked his way up and under the truck the night before and got stuck, Sacramento Station KCRA reported.

Witthoeft's family called police and reported the incident.

Witthoeft said he had just paid $1,000 to fix his truck last week, but the truck had to be towed back to the shop for repairs due to damage caused by the pit bull.

The dog eventually was able to wiggle out and animal service brought it to a county shelter.